


An Agreement Between Friends

by Is0lde



Category: Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: Blood and Gore, Implied Slash, M/M, Odium's Champion, Past Relationship(s), Tragedy, fight to the death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-01
Updated: 2016-03-01
Packaged: 2018-05-24 04:11:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6141073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Is0lde/pseuds/Is0lde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Odium’s Champion should not wear such a playful smile.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Agreement Between Friends

**Author's Note:**

> The first thing I wrote for the fandom all the way back in 2014 on tumblr. It deserves to be the first thing I post on AO3. Besides, who doesn't love a bit of fanciful blatant speculation? Here is the Honour’s-Champion!Kaladin/Odium’s-Champion!Adolin fic I "accidentally" wrote.

The roar of battle died as Kaladin watched Adolin stride through the cacophony of carnage that whirled around them without care. The violence seemed to part before him, clearing a path for Odium’s Champion. It need not have bothered; Kaladin knew nothing on this battlefield could touch the other man. Adolin was one with the chaos.

Bloody eyes met blue and the blond raised his blade in a mocking salute as he drew near, climbing the hill to where Kaladin waited. It felt familiar.

It also felt wrong.

“Bridgeboy,” Adolin said and it was so wrong because nothing had changed. Odium’s Champion should not wear such a playful smile. Kaladin could see the twist in it, the edge of cruelty just at the corners, but he could not help but see the past there as well. Memories, of that smile seen from across the sparring ground, of that smile as they walked side by side, of that smile pressed against his neck, flickered in his mind.

“Princeling,” Kaladin answered despite himself. Adolin’s grin widened sharply and he laughed that same barking laugh of better days, edged with something hollow. He stepped forward and leaned in close, red cloak snapping in the wind that rose at Kaladin’s back.

“I’m going to enjoy this you know,” Adolin promised, oddly intimate. He might as well have whispered it in Kaladin’s ear. “Breaking you into a thousand little pieces.”

Again, the answer came so easily as though no time had passed between them. Kaladin grinned, feeling the tempest of stormlight inside swell and tasted something bittersweet on his tongue as the words left his lips.

“I’d like to see you try.”

* * *

“If you kill me,” Adolin murmured in Kaladin’s ear, fingers digging deeper into his chest as though clambering for purchase or reaching for his heart. “I’ll take you with me.”

The pain had long since passed the moment of transcendence. It was something other than himself and had been for most of the battle. Gritting his teeth Kaladin forced another lashing onto Adolin. The weight clinging to his bruised frame increased and he felt a breath hitch against his ear before mad laughter bubbled forth.

“You’ll tear yourself apart,” Adolin said conspiratorially. The entire duel had been a sick mirror of their youth and even now Odium’s Champion played the role with twisted aplomb. The arm slung around Kaladin’s neck tightening as the lashings increased in quick succession. Gauntleted fingers sank deeper, curling around his heart with a caress. “I wonder if stormlight can heal your heart if it is no longer there…”

It was a moot point either way; Kaladin knew he wouldn’t have enough to try. With grim resolve he added another lashing to Adolin, who slipped minutely with a gasp before correcting and pulling himself up by the arm around Kaladin’s neck with impossible strength, the shattered remains of his plate cutting and digging into their exposed flesh.

“You’re going to kill us both,” Adolin said with sudden understanding, chuckling painfully and shaking his head, sweaty hair brushing the side of Kaladin’s face.

“Yes,” Kaladin answered, resolve hardening. There was a strange sense of peace in the admission, though he had realized there could have been no other end for them long before now. Adolin leaned his head against Kaladin’s affectionately to complete the mockery of their bloody, painful embrace. Something hot and wet dripped against the skin at his shoulder.

The fingers around his heart relaxed and it shuddered in response as he reversed the lashing keeping them suspended in the sky, allowing them to fall.

“I hate you,” Adolin whispered, voice devoid of vitriol, as gravity swallowed them both. The words had almost been left up there in the lofty place above it all but Kaladin caught them and recognized the lie that tainted their syllables. Smiling bitterly as they burst through the clouds in a swirling vortex of vapour he closed his eyes against the approaching impact and allowed the wind to devour his reply.

* * *

They lay there in the crater their final vector wrought, two broken bodies embedded in the rock and one another’s arms like a parody of two lovers. The splintered remains of their shardplate were dug into the charred rock, surrounding them in a glimmering star field that sparkled in the light of Nomon, some gleaming red with blood. A coagulating mess oozed around them. Above their heads Sylphrena and the Nameless Blade rested like gleaming sentinels, marking the place where their champions had fallen.

They screamed their shared lament in silence. 


End file.
